


concede

by enamuko



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 10:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20241025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enamuko/pseuds/enamuko
Summary: Hubert has far more important things to be attending to than sleep, no matter how much Ferdinand's incessant badgering and the traitorous shaking of his own hands say otherwise.





	concede

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Opalie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalie/gifts).

> This is probably the fastest turnaround time I've had on a fic in over a year. Three Houses has been doing that to me. Now back to the 5 chapter-length WIPs I'll never finish.

“Hubert.”

Hubert answered with a grunt, sounding more animal than human.

“Hubert!”

“What?!”

He snapped and slammed his hand on the table, with a _BANG_ so loud that he managed to even startle _himself_.

“You are falling asleep at your seat. You need to go to _bed._”

A lesser man might have rolled their eyes, but Hubert was above that, of course. Instead he used the sudden alertness to get back to his work, recovered as he was from his momentary need to... _Rest his eyes_.

He had certainly not been sleeping, and resented the implication.

“I have important work that needs doing,” he said, in a voice that even he had to admit sounded quite rough. Well, it _wa__s _quite late, and he _had_ been working for quite some time... Even if he had no intentions of stopping, he could admit that much. “As do _you_. Sleep can wait until we’ve adequately prepared for the summit.”

They had only three days until the representatives of the allied territories arrived, and Hubert was aware of exactly how unprepared they were. Of course, Lady Edelgard could handle any such political turmoil, he was certain, but it was not only his job but his _duty_ in life to make the process as simple as possible for her...

“And what use do you think you will be to her if you are so completely exhausted? You can hardly be called productive like this...”

Hubert turned to level a glare at his agitator. As per usual, Ferdinand was quite unfazed.

He stood beside the conference table that Hubert had claimed as his work area, one hand on his hip that he leaned into and the other hand gesturing as he often did when he spoke. He was frowning quite severely at him.

“If you have time to be criticizing my work ethic, you have time to be returning to your own.”

“I have finished my work for the night,” Ferdinand said with a shake of the head. “And there is nothing so pressing that it cannot wait until morning. I will be going to bed, as should _you_.”

Quiet finished with talking in circles, Hubert didn’t reply, and instead reached for his coffee mug— only to find it, to his horror, quite empty.

“How much of that have you _had_?” Ferdinand asked, disapproval clear in his voice. Again Hubert chose to ignore him, rather than waste his own precious time. He instead rose from his seat to prepare himself another cup of coffee, in preparation for the long night ahead...

“Had I known you would abuse it like that, I would have never gifted you those coffee beans.” Ferdinand sighed and shook his head.

“As though I couldn’t afford my own coffee?” Ferdinand was, annoyingly, making himself quite _difficult_ to ignore... A tactic Hubert had, admittedly, not had much success with in the past.

“At least then I would not be an accessory to your abuse of your own body.”

“Your lectures are becoming _far_ more tiresome than my work,” he said, and took a step away from the table—

—and immediately, his traitorous legs gave out beneath him.

It was instant, as though they had simply been _waiting_ for the opportune moment to betray him. His head spun sickeningly as he felt the world disappear beneath him, or something very much like it. His mug slipped from his grip, shattering loudly, and he...

Well, he surprisingly did not follow.

“Hubert!” Where Ferdinand had sounded simply _annoyed_ before, now he sounded _concerned_, as he surged forward to catch Hubert before he collapsed utterly...

Everything went fuzzy for a moment, and his vision went black at the edges, spots appearing in front of his eyes. The sudden collapse and the warped vision made him feel nauseous. He had been ignoring the trembling in his hands for hours now, forcing them to still enough to avoid smudging the ink on his work, but now he could hardly maintain a grip on Ferdinand’s coat...

“When was the last time you slept?” Ferdinand slipped an arm around his back, allowing Hubert to lean some weight against him. Though it did little for his pride, it certainly alleviated the swimming in his vision and the nausea curling in his stomach...

“There’s far too much to do to concern myself with sleep,” Hubert said. Or, at least, that was what Hubert _tried_ to say. Even to his own ears it came out as a half-garbled mess...

The exhaustion had overtaken him with worrying suddenness, when only five minutes ago he’d felt perfectly fine, albeit tired. Had the caffeine crash snuck up on him? Had he stood up too suddenly? Or perhaps the universe itself simply wished to spite him, having him collapse into Ferdinand’s arms when just moments ago he’d been insisting he was fine...

“You have not slept since we began preparations for the summit, have you.”

Ferdinand didn’t phrase it as a question. Hubert almost made a snide remark about his deductive skills improving, but found his tongue felt heavy. At least now he was regaining his bearings somewhat, and felt less of a need to lean on Ferdinand, though when he regained his footing the other man still kept a firm hand on his back as though he were a swooning maiden in need of assistance...

“Just a passing dizzy spell,” he insisted, even his words coming out much clearer than they had a moment ago. “The blood rushing to my head, nothing more. Didn’t you say you were heading for bed? Perhaps you should do that, rather than continue to bother me.”

“Hubert, what has gotten into you?” Ferdinand took a step back, removing his hand from him, which made Hubert feel a little more sure of himself. “These past few days, you have been in a _terrible_ mood. I have not seen you so prickly since our school days. Are you feeling well?”

Hubert froze.

He had been expecting further lectures. It was, admittedly, what he would have done. But the ire Ferdinand had faced him with earlier had melted away into pure concern. It was enough to give him pause...

“I... Simply can’t afford to lose focus, Ferdinand,” he said with a sigh. “And I suppose my single-mindedness has made me rather... _Prickly_, as you put it. I... Apologize, my friend.”

It wasn’t as though he and Ferdinand never sniped at one another; far from it. Their personalities had not stopped clashing any more than they had when they were still at the academy together; Ferdinand’s cheerful optimism to his dark stoicism, Ferdinand’s constant critiques of Edelgard to his unwavering devotion...

But they were on the same side. Perhaps it had taken Hubert a foolishly long time to realize they always had been. They squabbled, certainly, particularly over matters of state, but wasn’t that simply their duty? Their conflicting views and skills gave Edelgard a wide breadth of knowledge and opinion from which she could devise her best plan of action, and when they were off duty, well...

They didn’t squabble in _personal_ matters quite as often as anyone who saw them at work might expect.

But Ferdinand was right. Hubert had been especially on edge the past few days. The summit Lady Edelgard was to host before the week was out would be their next important step in her long-term plans, and he was doing everything he could to alleviate some of her burden; researching the representatives so they might plan in advance what to say to assuage their fears or bolster their confidence, preparing eloquent speeches for Edelgard to give, making arrangements for meeting halls and security, and every other detail he could possibly imagine...

“You need your rest,” Ferdinand said, but this time, he didn’t sound pushy and irritated as he had before; the frown on his face was one of raw concern, rather than disapproval. “If not for yourself, than for Edelgard. Surely you must see that you will be a better worker when you are well rested. And... for me, as well. I have been quite worried about you, you know...”

Hubert’s heart stuttered in his chest. He felt himself flushing at hearing that, and turned his face away so that Ferdinand might not notice the red tinge in the relative darkness of the room.

If Ferdinand noticed his predicament, he said nothing and simply continued on. “I’ve been watching you burning the candle at both ends, so to speak, for days now. I thought you were simply working yourself too hard, but to find you have not been sleeping _all that time_? You know I cannot help but worry about you, right?”

“It hasn’t been _all_ this time,” Hubert muttered, voice little more than a mumble as he covered the lower half of his face with his hand to better disguise his embarrassment.

Ferdinand could be poetic, dramatic even, but it was his earnest moments that made something stir in Hubert that he found increasingly difficult to ignore. He was a man who did not trust easily; his father and the many other serpents who had surrounded Lady Edelgard all her life made sure of that. To hear him say with such raw honesty that he was worried for him, and to believe him, was overwhelming for Hubert in a way he refused to analyze at the moment (and, in a way, had been refusing to analyze for a very long time now).

It also made him feel even worse about the attitude Ferdinand had mentioned. It had gone beyond squabbling. Hubert had been terse, and, indeed, prickly. Ferdinand’s citation of their school days made him flinch because, yes, now that he thought about it, it was exactly that sort of animosity...

“Well, regardless, it’s no wonder you have been so cranky.”

He had been just about to launch into a long-winded apology for his behaviour, feeling humbled by Ferdinand’s concern rather than defensive about his irritation as he was earlier, but once again he was caught completely off guard— something Ferdinand excelled at for that same Unexamined Reason.

He was smiling, and his tone had been teasing, but the furrowing of his brow and the look in his eyes still spoke of concern that made Hubert’s stomach do an interesting flip...

“_Cranky_?” he chuckled, a noise that always seemed to come out of him quite darkly even when intended with genuine good humour, as it was now... “I’m a grown man, Ferdinand, not a child who needs to be put down for their nap.”

“Child, no,” Ferdinand agreed, with easy humour, their banter slipping away from the frustrated sniping of their youth to their much more comfortingly familiar friendship (?) of the present. “But a nap sounds like precisely what you need. Or rather, a good night’s sleep. And if you will not go there of your own volition, then I may have no choice but to put you there myself, as you suggest.”

The proper response, Hubert would think five minutes later once his brain had adequate time to rest itself, would have been to return the joke with something similar about being capable enough to put himself to bed, or something along those lines...

But his traitorous brain instead chose to imagine Ferdinand scooping him up into his arms— those same arms that had just held him when he had nearly lost consciousness— without effort, despite Hubert being taller and just as broad, because unlike him he had focused on _martial_ prowess rather than _magical... _Ferdinand carrying him to his room like he surely would have been forced to if he’d fainted dead away like he’d been worried he was going to for a moment...

Would he simply place him in his bed and leave him, he wondered? No, that didn’t seem like Ferdinand... Both the romantic in him and his own prodigious ego would hardly allow him to do the bare minimum like that. Instead Hubert’s imagination ran away with the thought that he would almost certainly carefully attend to him, ensure he was comfortable before leaving...

“Hubert? Are you alright? You aren’t going to pass out, are you? If you are, I would appreciate some warning...”

Ferdinand’s voice brought him back to reality. There was that concern again... So raw, Ferdinand always the sort to wear his heart on his sleeve, within the margins of what he considered properly noble...

“I’m fine,” he assured him quickly, though he had to wonder if the sleep deprivation was in part to blame for his mind wandering so far without his permission.

“It pains me to say this,” Hubert said, though with his thoughts drifting wherever they pleased, he couldn’t even dredge up the energy to sound biting. “But I think you might be right. A rest will... Do me some good.”

It would hopefully at least allow him to focus on the actual task at hand, rather than thoughts of Ferdinand tucking him gently into bed, brushing hair away from his face...

He took a step away from the conference table and quite nearly tripped over his own feet as a series of things happened all at once; his leg muscles seized up (likely in response to the fact that he’d been sitting there, unmoving, servants bringing him coffee until he could no longer suffer their presence and sent them away, for nearly half a day) and conspired to nearly send him to the floor for the second time; his vision swam as movement once again proved detrimental; and he over corrected to avoid Ferdinand, who had stepped forward as if to help him (he was not an elderly man that needed an _escort_) at the same time as he did.

Ferdinand’s gloved hand caught his wrist, a whisper of white silk against bare skin that was practically the same colour (Hubert saw little occasion to go out, these days, and the lack of sleep had dulled and paled his complexion even further), and the other hand went to his chest to steady him. His stomach gave another lurch. Had he not been quite aware of the effects of sleep deprivation on the human body (it fell under the category of... _personal interest_ for him), he would have sworn up and down that he’d been poisoned, or at least a particularly strong brandy had been slipped into his coffee while he wasn’t paying attention, because he felt almost drunk...

“To bed, then,” Ferdinand said without comment on his second near tumble. Hubert expected him to release him, but instead when he took a step forward, Ferdinand was right there with him...

“I can make it to my room by myself,” he said, and cringed internally at how much he sounded like a petulant child...

“Can you? You seem to be struggling to even make it to the other side of the room,” Ferdinand teased. He _did _release his wrist and instead moved one hand to Hubert’s waist...

“I could carry you, if you would prefer.”

That series of events made Hubert’s mind go completely blank, to avoid the overload that might have happened otherwise. The hand delicately resting on his waist, as he leaned some of his weight into Ferdinand’s side when the room decided to continue spinning around him... The call back to his private thoughts as though Ferdinand had read his mind...

Perhaps Dorothea was right, all those years ago... Perhaps he had seen too many operas. Or, more accurately, read too many romance novels, though he would never admit to such a thing even under threat of torture.

They made their way through the darkened, quiet halls in silence, comfortable but for the tension Hubert was creating in his own mind, while Ferdinand seemed utterly oblivious to it. Now that he was up and out of his chair, Hubert was painfully aware of how bone-achingly tired he actually was. It was hardly the first time he’d gone so long without sleep, but the more often it happened the less he seemed equipped to handle it...

He was getting old, he supposed, despite only being 25. Being the left hand of the Emperor just aged you prematurely...

The stairs posed something of a challenge, but they managed, and soon found themselves in front of Hubert’s chambers. He staunchly refused to ask how Ferdinand knew where his chambers were, or to read too much into the fact, and instead just muttered a thank you that his leaden tongue blended unpleasantly together with a bidding goodnight.

“Do you need... Any further help?”

Oh, he’d hardly stepped away from Ferdinand’s guiding arm when that made him nearly stumble again. The lilt of the question, the poignant pause and clearing of his throat in the middle...

Yes, quite like a few of the books he was more than a little ashamed to admit he’d read in what little spare time he had...

“I... Believe I can manage the rest on my own, thank you,” he said, and thankfully aside from a slight hitch, his voice behaved itself and stayed even. “And I’ll see you bright and early, ready to get back to work instead of hounding me...?”

“Oh, earlier than you, I’m quite certain,” Ferdinand said. “After all, _I’ve_ been sleeping. My body is not about to collapse under its own weight.”

They smiled at each other as they traded barbs, and Hubert waved off the sudden lightheadedness as a side effect of the sleep deprivation and the weakness in his knees as a sign that Ferdinand’s joke was perhaps a bit too close to reality.

“Well... Goodnight, Hubert.”

Watching Ferdinand turn to walk off, Hubert couldn’t help but want to get in one last quip, and before his mind even had time to fully process what he was saying he said to his retreating back, “What, no goodnight kiss?”

Ferdinand stopped.

Hubert almost quite literally slapped himself. Dorothea had, evidently, become a terrible influence on him.

“Well then, goodnight—” He swiftly turned to slip into his room, playing it off as just another one of those things they would say to one another to try and get a rise when things got too serious for comfort between them—

—and was promptly stopped cold by a hand on his shoulder that deftly turned him around, pressed him back against the door, and held him there while Ferdinand leaned up and pressed a comparatively chaste, almost hesitant kiss to his lips.

“There,” Ferdinand said, with a level of confidence that was as betrayed by how red he was turning as Hubert had been by every part of his body for the past half an hour or so. “I suppose you can consider that your reward for finally conceding to the inevitably realization that I was right. Now get some rest, Hubert. We have much to accomplish tomorrow.”

While he was still standing there, _gobsmacked_, Hubert could have sworn he heard the faint echo of Ferdinand humming pleasantly to himself as he walked to his own room...

  


“I don’t know how you did it, Ferdinand,” Edelgard said over the first sip of her morning tea. “Frankly, I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Why, Edelgard,” Ferdinand said with that lilt to his voice that always made her certain that she had made a terrible mistake in inviting him to get a word in edgewise. “You should know better than to doubt me by this point. There’s no challenge too great for me.”

“Yes, well,” she said with a sigh that was as fond as it was exasperated. “In this one area, I suppose I will have to concede your victory. You must have made an excellent argument.”

“I have my ways,” Ferdinand said, with a chuckle, and... Was he... Blushing? “I have my ways...”

“That settles it, then; I most certainly don’t want to know.”


End file.
